The Nazism Of Narnia

Just as it is foolish to condemn all intolerance, it is also misguided to make strict rules about permissible forms of intolerance. No shouting. No breaking the law. The correct form of intolerance always depends on its object and its context. If Charles Murray were to hand out copies of The Bell Curve in a supermarket, it would be entirely acceptable to shout at him. Sometimes laws need to be broken—sometimes you need to sit at the front of the bus. And for all but the staunchest pacifists, violence can be a perfectly justifiable way to express intolerance when someone attacks you.

Earlier I claimed that it’s no longer controversial to think that civil liberties don’t depend on race, gender, or religion. Unfortunately, a clear-eyed assessment of the evidence shows that many people would likely embrace a return to the (not so) good old days. In this country, a congressman can publically express ethno-nationalism—“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies”—and be praised by colleagues for it. The longtime best-selling book of Christian apologetics—C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity—calls for religious nationalism (“all economists and statesmen should be Christians”) and argues that God wants men to be the head of the household. These are popular ideals, but they are poisonous and deserve fierce resistance, not complacent tolerance.

Let the record show that a Stanford and University of Chicago-trained philosophy and religion professor (who holds an M.Div) believes that the proper way to address Charles Murray’s arguments is by shouting them down. Let the record show that a Stanford-and-Chicago-trained philosophy and religion professor believes that we should not allow the arguments of C.S. Lewis — C.S. Lewis! — to be heard, because people might come to believe them. And let the record show that this did not appear in a magazine of the radical left, but in a center-left publication owned by Jeff Bezos, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

Prof. Levinovitz begins with reasonable points: No society can tolerate everything, and tolerance’s value is relative to the truth. But, as MacIntyre would say, which truth? Whose truth? Levinovitz is quite certain he knows the answers: his own truth, which he believes is the Truth. In this piece, he thinks that moral truth and political truth can be known with the same certainty as scientific truth — and that secular liberalism is in full possession of that truth. Therefore, when you shout down Charles Murray or a follower of C.S. Lewis, you are serving the truth.

I won’t quit because my colleagues and I are part of a sacred order, bound to seek out and profess truth, no matter how complicated or unappealing that truth might be. The truth about evolution, for example—and why people like you, Sen. Rubio, seem incapable of believing in it.

I won’t quit because there’s no feeling like the one I get when a student says my class has changed his or her life. It’s as if I’ve performed alchemy or magic: With nothing more than a powerful set of symbols (and a PowerPoint), I can, on occasion, alter the very fabric of people’s reality. It’s like church, but for everyone.

So Levinovitz says academia is a universalist religion that instantiates a “sacred order.” More:

In fact, humanities professors like me work against many of your core values. Explaining the origin and persistence of creationist pseudoscience? Religion and philosophy. Shutting down racists and sexists who explain discrimination with “natural differences”? Anthropology and history. We can’t take all the credit, of course, but the fact that the arc of history seems to bend toward justice is due, at least in part, to the efforts of humanities scholars.

This man is not a disinterested scholar. He’s a zealot, and an extremely self-righteous one at that. Prof. Levinovitz is as ardent for his own god as any hidebound fundamentalist is for his. The thing is, Levinovitz is very high-church, in that he speaks for the elites in American society.

I’ll give Levinovitz this much: he understands the nature of the culture war better than many of us Christians do. As they consolidate their power, secular fundamentalists like Levinovitz will continue to try to shout down, forbid, condemn, and suppress orthodox Christians and any other religious believers who contest the established religion.

Know that this is coming. And prepare for it. What we conservatives must do is stop believing that it can’t happen here. The Law of Merited Impossibility — It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it — is vindicated every day. Think of it: this college professor, publishing in a mainstream center-left publication, calls for treating the work of C.S. Lewis as a threat to civilization.

What completely escapes Prof. Alan Levinovitz is that his bigotry and intolerance is an effective recruiting device for the far right. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As I keep saying, the Alan Levinovitzes of the world, and the Slate magazines, have no idea what demons they are summoning. They will.

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94 Responses to The Nazism Of Narnia

Ah, but Rod, when they DO summon up those demons, they’ll just point to that and say “see? We told you all along that, in their heart of hearts, those righties were all monsters. Guys like Rod Dreher are just the polite, respectable face of blackest evil.” And they’ll use that as an excuse to double down on treating all conservatives, even meek and agreeable ones, as the moral equivalent of Nazis.

The obvious outcome, as we’ve seen countless times throughout history, will be a warm, caring society of universal peace and tolerance.

RD: “Prof. Levinovitz begins with reasonable points: No society can tolerate everything, and tolerance’s value is relative to the truth. But, as MacIntyre would say, which truth? Whose truth? Levinovitz is quite certain he knows the answers: his own truth, which he believes is the Truth. In this piece, he thinks that moral truth and political truth can be known with the same certainty as scientific truth — and that secular liberalism is in full possession of that truth. Therefore, when you shout down Charles Murray or a follower of C.S. Lewis, you are serving the truth.”

It doesn’t logically follow that having convictions about what is the True and the Good justifies shouting down those you disagree with. I also don’t resent Prof. Levinovitz for his convictions. Though I do think a significant number of his convictions are disastrous. To Charles Murray’s the Bell Curve, I think it’s an unfortunate book that’s not relevant to a healthy society and causes unnecessary problems.

Justice Kennedy’s rhetoric was a little overblown, because it does not, on its own terms, define the limits of toleration, or of individual definition, nor does it set forth the basis on which Justice Kennedy would base those limits.

As a lawyer, Potato has no doubt experienced just how vapid many statements from the bench can be, and how much they reflect the judge’s state of mind at the time, rather than a detailed and sober examination of what applicable law says.

While I have no particular objection to a state issuing a marriage license to a same sex couple (I voted no on my state’s DOMA), I do find the assertion that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to do so to be utterly without legal foundation. It was merely wishful thinking.

While the federal constitution does significantly restrain the exercise of power by the federal government, and by the states, it does not mandate anything just because an articulate individual, or group of individuals, passionately desires it.

Kennedy was indulging in philosophy, rather than expounding the constitution and the law. I am reminded once again of the admirable brevity of Potter Stewart’s concurrence in Loving v. Virginia: No law can withstand constitutional scrutiny that makes an act a crime, or not, depending on the race of the actor. Nothing more really needed to be said. But, signally, the result of Obergefell could not have been arrived at with the same brevity. No law was at issue which made an act a crime, and no state had singled out any type of person for disparate treatment. Kennedy had to make it up.

As I often point out, Leftists never try their stuff in gun country.

Not unless they are familiar with their own second amendment rights. It is indeed rare in history for any party or faction to insist that the opposition should have all the guns.

Jackie Treehorn: “As for those who “shout down, forbid, condemn, and suppress”, whose side recently pushed for a Constitutional Amendment to ban same sex marriage? Call me when Levinovitz and his ilk try to ban yours.”

No one had any thought of such a constitutional amendment until it became clear that the Left intended to get the Supreme Court to impose same-sex marriage by fiat over the entire country. The amendment was a defensive move in reaction to the Left’s plan. And it turns out the supporters of the amendment were exactly right–the Left’s plan proceeded just as they suspected.

…secular fundamentalists like Levinovitz will continue to try to shout down, forbid, condemn, and suppress orthodox Christians and any other religious believers who contest the established religion.

Someone once wrote that the Russian revolution was supported by Jewish brains, Latvian rifles, and Russian idiots.

If the cultural Marxists are allowed to run amuck like they have for the past fifty years, it will be said that the fall of the West was the result of collaboration between Jewish brains, Muslim jihadists, and Christian idiots.

“Slate used to be a center-left publication, but over the past couple of years it’s been inching farther and farther left, toward Salon.com territory. Even for me as a liberal, it’s gone off the deep end.”

Slate’s political and cultural writing has been a burning mass of tires for some years.

I, a liberal, opposed Trump in the election–reluctantly voted for (gasp) Hillary–and even I found their election coverage a pornographic embarrassment.

It seems to me that this controversy over same sex marriage is much ado about nothing, if Rod is right on his primary premise, to wit, that the Order of the Universe (or “God” if you prefer) has so arranged the human race that the only “real” marriage is between men and women. (According to the Old Testament, the Jewish (and hence Christian) God at does not seem to have any serious problems with polygamy, as in how many men or women at a time. But He does seem to require at least one of each.)

So let us assume for a minute that only marriages between men and women are “for real” in some cosmic sense.

If this is the case, a statement by the State, or by a Church for that matter, or by anyone really, that two men are now “married” is on the same footing as a declaration by that State or that Church that the earth is flat. In fact, the earth is not flat, whatever anyone says about it, and the actual true state of affairs will become manifest in due course. The sun and the planets will obstinately refuse to behave as the flat earthers insist they must; no one will sail off the edge of anything; great circle routes for airliners will continue to be shorter than going “directly” on some flat-earth map. There is little need to get all excited about it.

So also here, if Rod is right. Such “marriages” will manifest their falseness in due time. The bond will not work as it should; the resultant family will prove to be illusory. That such a marriage has been offered the legal and tax advantages of heterosexual marriages is of little importance in the big picture. This is a secular state. We are not trying to conform to some Heavenly Pattern.

(The same observation could be made about a male who declares that he is “really” a woman, or that he has “become” a woman. If in fact this is impossible, the claim will not work in the long run.)

I honestly don’t know what I think about all this. I’m not really of the “the Bible tells me so” party on this one. I’m reserving judgment. In any case, most same sex couples are more interested in secular, legal and tax concerns than they are in teleology, so it may not matter much to most of them. Ordinary people of any persuasion seldom view their lives from a cosmic standpoint. (I don’t often think of my husband and me as Christ and the Church, or as the Sky Father and the Earth Mother.)

All that said, I will admit that Justice Kennedy was waving his arms around just a little (as Siarlys Jenkins says, his rhetoric was a bit “overblown”) in the infamous quote. Neither he nor any sane person really thinks there are no limits to what should be tolerated in a stable society, even if that’s what he seems to be saying, taken literally. I do think that same sex marriage is well within the ambit of practices which we should, for reasons of fairness and charity, support in a secular society, whatever the Ultimate Theological and Philosophical Import may be.

I have Mere Christianity. I don’t want to type the whole paragraph. Lewis is saying that it is wrong to expect clergy to tell us how society should be organized. He says that Christians who want the Christian view on economics or politics should turn to Christian economists and statesmen. He does say they should all be Christian, but clearly he means this in the sense that everyone should be a Christian because Christianity is true. Calling this nationalism is absurd. It might be difficult for someone in the relativistic modern age to understand, but Lewis could say that without wanting to discriminate against non Christians. Even I, a moral therapeutic Christian of the sort Rod regularly stereotypes can understand this– if Christianity is true then everyone ought to be a Christian. This doesn’t mean you favor persecution or lack of freedom for non Christians. If I were an atheist I would probably think everyone should ” face facts” without wishing to discriminate against those who still insisted on believing in God.

Might have been shorter if I just typed in the paragraph. Ironically, somewhere else, maybe in the same book, Lewis says that Christians often disagree vehemently on politics, so it might not resolve much if all economists and politicians were Christian.

Actually, I agreed with part of Levinovitz’s piece. The Lewis part was stupid. And I don’t know enough about Murray’s recent writings to comment ( or protest). But I would protest someone like Milo. And the Middlebury students would have been within their rights to protest against Murray in a peaceful way. Where they went wrong was was in trying to shut down the event and where they became thugs was in using violence. Levinovitz condemns their violence as immoral — it seems to me you should have mentioned that, since it was the violence that made the Middlebury protests so outrageous.

But you are right about his comments on Lewis. We liberal/ lefties often have no clue how closely we resemble fundamentalists sometimes.

Levinovitz’s loathing and fear of a dominantly Christian society is understandable. And surely at some level Levinovitz understands why we loathe and fear the sort of society he wants to make us live in.

They are bringing it on themselves, these SJW fundamentalists. Every time news breaks of a new SJW hissy fit on campus (as what happened to the Christakises at Yale, or when “students of color” blocked whites from the main thoroughfare at Berkeley) the sympathy for a matching alt-rightish intolerance grows. The worst is that many people of good will who rightly don’t believe in the racist categories of the alt-right will nonetheless slowly come to be fellow travelers of such racism, if only in self-defense against this anti-Christian, anti-Western extremism. Re: Milo, I don’t consider him one of the racists, but he may well be functioning as a kind of gateway drug to such racism, and his popularity is, understandably, soaring.

As a social conservative on the left on many issues (fiscal, environmental, etc.), I’ve tried for years to maintain civil dialogue with these academic leftists, but it has now become literally impossible. They shout me down, block me, censor me. Their turn from mere shrillness to the kind of “principled intolerance” supported by Prof. Levinovitz seemed to come around 2010. Belatedly, I’ve learned my lesson:

Levinovitz is right about one thing. Classical liberalism, in the final analysis, is a suicide cult–at least, if it is attempted in a social context lacking the kind of religious and cultural uniformity present in the USA up until recently.

Likewise, Rod, I’m sympathetic when you point out the bigoted intolerance of the “progressive” left, but bigoted intolerance is only a Bad Thing from within the framework of a classical liberalism that is now simply irrelevant, totally spent as a cultural force.

At one point, before the 1965 immigration act and the Pill, classical liberalism might have represented a viable third way. But at this point there are only two choices: revolution, or reaction. One thing these choices share in common is that, for both, error indeed has no rights.

Levinovitz, the academic, has no real power outside a few students and/or readers who might take his views seriously.

These students are the lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats of tomorrow. No one would take same-sex “marriage” seriously 30 years ago. No one would take “I’m really a woman with a penis” seriously 30 years ago. No one except for some intellectuals and academics.

I studied philosophy in university. All things considered, I’d rather be a welder than a philosophy professor, in the same way a rueful Einstein later wished he’d remained a watchmaker. The professor is right about such influence, and it hasn’t always been to the good.

When a professor can wax philosophical about sucker punching intolerance for his views, since he’s no hard core pacifist, you know the same fate awaits our society as transpired in the culture outside the German academy – the complete degradation of our shared values. No, it won’t be Hitler this time, nor even Trump, but a far baser beast slouching our way, regardless of race, gender or sexual practice. As Mark Twain presciently observed, history doesn’t exactly repeat, but it does rhyme, and the discordant tune played to it produces just the same effect.

Great comments here as usual, and I particularly appreciate Eric Mader’s point about the intolerance arms race between the SJW left and the alt-right (and the “Slow Learner” blog post he links to is great as well).

What I’ve come to believe is that we are in a battle for Liberalism. Rod has pointed out some of the problems with Liberalism, but for all its faults, I do not see any other system on the horizon that would allow for flourishing, independent religious communities. There’s little need to recount the problems that would arise if the leftists seized power. If the alt-right or some future even more extreme rightist faction took power, a state-approved Eurocentric Christianity might flourish, but woe to any religious community that smells of foreignness.

Everyone knows there’s a divide in the U.S. between political liberals and political conservatives. I’m far more worried about the divide between those who still subscribe to genuine principles of Liberalism – summed up recently by Matthew Sitman on Twitter as “error has rights,” nuanced a few years ago by Ryan T. Anderson as “people who err have rights” – and those on both political extremes who reject those principles and see politics as a naked grab for power.

I’m hopeful that the majority of Americans reject that latter stance, but it’s hard to tell. One of my most left-leaning friends, a comics artist, attended the March for Life earlier this year. He’d been traumatized by his forced attendance as a child. He was shocked to discover the nuance and humanity in the pro-life protestors he met. He wrote a comic about it. The overwhelming response from friends on Facebook and Twitter from both sides of the aisle was positive. But the most vocal responses were from three or four people who harangued anyone suggesting that it was worth even considering the pro-life perspective. Their voices drowned out most of the others.

That difference in volume from a relative minority makes me hopeful that the anti-tolerance camps are smaller than they appear. But they seem to be growing, and unless moderates from the left and the right can stand together against those extremes, I don’t see how we avoid being swept up what is essentially – and maybe even actually – a never-ending civil war.

James G. says:
March 21, 2017 at 9:18 pm
When C.S. Lewis looks to you like an extremist or a fascist, it is not Lewis you see, but a reflection of self.”

And to the SJW types, including those who are long past their teems or 20s and are rich as Croesus, your statement is itself HATE that must be prevented from harming any victims of the innumerable injustices forced on an innocent world by the inherently bigoted white male Christians.

If nothing else, articles like the one from Mr. Levinovitz demonstrate that most of the people in this country have no grasp of the sort of struggle we are engaged in. This is not outside of the mainstream but we as a society still buy into the narrative that all of our kids must be sent to college to be indoctrinated with this swill and that we collectively should pay for it.

You know, all this left/right, liberal/conservative blame game is besides the point of the evil that runs through every human heart. I cringe when I hear people identify themselves as if that really means anything except to say, “Me, not bad like that,” as if conservatism – or liberalism, progressivism, whatever politics, could really salve us or save us. I might be tempted to favor libertarianism, until I recall a candidate taking his clothes off on stage and revealing those would be emperors to be without clothes too.

One of the commenters on Slate argued that the problem liberals might be having now with the idea of tolerance is that in they no longer trust the public to make wise decisions.

Levinovitz is right to be critical of “complacent tolerance” but there is no reason tolerance has to be complacent. Tolerance doesn’t mean that the ideas of others go unchallenged, it means that ideas you find objectionable are dealt with with reason, not coercion.

I wonder though if much of the left is still capable of constructing an argument that stands on its own merits rather than appealing to the emotions or relying on sarcasm. If you know you CAN’T win a reason argument with an opponent, and you know you WON’T be persuaded yourself, which may be where Levinovitz is with Murray, well it’s probably better to shout at him until he goes away.

“What I’ve come to believe is that we are in a battle for Liberalism. Rod has pointed out some of the problems with Liberalism, but for all its faults, I do not see any other system on the horizon that would allow for flourishing, independent religious communities.”

But liberalism from the start was *intended* to replace Christianity (Jefferson boasted there would be no Christians left in the country in 50 years) and has *failed* to allow these communities. Because the liberal promise of religious tolerance was a confidence trick. It was forwarded to pacify religious people until liberalism was fully securre in its rule, at which point the pretense could be dropped.

What is concerning about the secular fundamentalist phenomenon is the need in a free society for a loyal opposition.

I see no issue with saying individuals like David Duke or Louis Farrakhan are beyond the pale.

On the other hand, Charles Murray is an establishment conservative, yet he is getting the same treatment that Lincoln Rockwell might get in a prior era.

Likewise, about half the Country voted for Trump. If Trumpism, American nationalism, and the rest of the Trump program is beyond the pale, then the Left is claiming half the country are basically neo-Nazis who are okay to violently oppose.

To have a functioning democracy, you really can place 10-15% of the fringes outside the pale, and this is probably necessary. But you can’t do it with 30 to 50% of the population. That is basically a road to civil war.

So I am not saying you cannot have social ostracism in a democracy, nor that you shouldn’t, the problem is you can’t declare half the country enemies.

I really wish the Right would go after the extremes on the Left, and give them the same treatment that the extreme Right gets. However, I would not support violent attacks on pro-choice advocates (despite 58 million+ dead) because this would be de-stabilizing to the entire system, for the same reason any rational person would see the problems with the attack of Murray.

Can you imagine how the Left would respond if the Right identified the pro-choice movement as Neo-Nazi’s (given the genocidal number of abortions and the racial and gender disparities in the practice), and reasoned that its always good to sucker punch a Nazi?

It clearly could happen, and if this is the kind of climate the Left wants to create, it might very well happen. . . and then we are basically stuck in a shooting war.

An essential point if we are really going to find our way out of the wilderness, and not right back into an older and familiar wilderness.

But liberalism from the start was *intended* to replace Christianity

Arrogant nonsense. Liberalism was championed by evangelical Christians. I would distinguish however between constitutional republican government, and liberalism. The former is something I want even for the socialist commonwealth, because we can’t trust our socialist leaders any more than the bourgeoisie can trust their enlightened liberal leaders.

I wonder though if much of the left is still capable of constructing an argument that stands on its own merits rather than appealing to the emotions or relying on sarcasm.

What passes for a “left” in this country relies on unproven axioms which most people are not only convinced of, but unaware of. This does lead to a certain hysteria in discourse, since they assume axiomatically what nobody else takes seriously.

If nothing else, articles like the one from Mr. Levinovitz demonstrate that most of the people in this country have no grasp of the sort of struggle we are engaged in.

No, no. Most people in this country are not engaged in this struggle at all, and have no intention of being drawn into it. A pox on both your houses.

How can somebody be so stupid as to accept evolution and yet reject racial differences?

Because, having no imaginary ideological fetishes to justify, and knowing something of how evolution really works, we understand that the prejudices do not follow from the facts. Also, one of the evolutionary advantages of sexual reproduction is that the gene pools are being constantly mixed. History does tell us that artificial constraints on that mixing result in very poor material for evolutionary success.

If this is the case, a statement by the State, or by a Church for that matter, or by anyone really, that two men are now “married” is on the same footing as a declaration by that State or that Church that the earth is flat. In fact, the earth is not flat, whatever anyone says about it, and the actual true state of affairs will become manifest in due course.

I think Potato is right about that. One remark I made after Obergefell was, well, its only a legal fiction. Now any lawyer knows (and some of the rest of us do to) that a legal fiction is perfectly serviceable for all practical intents and purposes, civilly speaking. But it doesn’t join together in any cosmic sense what God has kept asunder.

Humor. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need to laugh at and mock these fools. We need to satirize and attempt to parody them, though much of their beliefs are beyond parody. We need more comedy writers who can skewer these nutjobs, at least as much as we need good men like Rod who writer seriously about threat to democracy and society they represent.

These people are big, fat, juicy targets for puncturing with wit. The saving grace is that most Americans, including most lefties, are not as soaking-in-it as these types of academics, and when given “permission” by a comedic analyses can laugh out loud at these fools’ excesses.

Anne says:
“March 21, 2017 at 4:33 pm
“All the talk about liberal ideals of the university being about exchanging points of view and openness to ideas is just a ruse, always has been.”

And that’s why nobody but leftwingers have ever passed their doctoral dissertations and earned advanced degrees from the Ivies and all those other liberal institutions of higher learning, right? Er, wait…”

Pretty much. You might find a few in the last 20 years or so that you consider rightwing, but I can almost guarantee that I would not look at them that way. Has anyone received an advanced degree from an Ivy lately, while making it clear that they believe that marriage is only possible between a man and a woman?

Early Bird has it right. When these self-righteous prigs realize that everyone is LAUGHING derisively at them, that their tin pot emperors have no clothes, they are more likely to lie down on the ground and throw a loud temper tantrum than to slink away in mortified shame, but their run will be over.

As a philosophy professor (and one who has read everything C.S. Lewis has written) I would like to point out that the love of wisdom should never be confused with academic philosophy. And I would also add that while it is true that a philosophy professor could be a lover of wisdom, I can think of no harder place to be one than in academia. I have often thought that if the extremists (of left or right) take over and come looking for lovers of wisdom to send to the gulag, the best place to hide out would be in a philosophy department–it’s the last place they would look.

Some say it was the aim of the Enlightenment propagandists to destroy the medieval Christianity which they saw as a stranglehold on the soaring human spirit.

If this fellow is a typical example (not necessarily true that he is… but I think maybe he truly is), then the fruit of the Enlightenment is to trade one “vile superstition” for another, with less scruples.